I attempted to make my way to the finals of the Gold sprint races at the Galleries in the city recently. First round I was super nervous and really didn’t feel comfortable at all when up on the bike. I took off well and was apparently in front until I pretty much slipped off the seat and almost came to a full holt. I was up against a fast fixie dude and he did smoke me. Sadly he didn’t make it through to the finals.

Pic by Cameron

My second attempt I went up against Chris and he too smashed me. There were a few BMU guys there on the night and all of them rode really well. Chris did end up winning the entire round and made his way to the final. Unfortunately for him his first up opponent in the final went on to win the entire even and the bike. He did ride really well Chris and his times would have put him through on a couple of heats for sure. Both the winning guy and another older guy were pretty serious about it all. So serious they had bought their own rollers to warm up on. I took video of pretty much every heat but just haven’t had time to upload the yet.

Funnily enough at Raw Track this week [I will discuss that later] both these riders were competing… and the bike “lycra boy” won is for sale. lol

Chris vs Lycra from mwg on Vimeo.

Laptop is now at home, iPhone is in hand, but time has escaped out the back door again. Hoping to have some updates in the next week including big rides, track racing, angry doctor prep, gliding, videos, blog font massage… so much – so little time. only one week to go till the angry.

I need to go to bed in readiness for tomorrows last ditch attempt at form improvements. It will be a serious gauge on next weeks performance.

After four lovely years our home laptop had died. Its sad, we’ve spent many long nights together as well as days and the like.

Looks like we will be off to purchase a new iMac for the home next pay day – so render this as a heads up i will be offline for a little bit until the new purchase
Hoping my iPhone 4 will be at home soon as well.

Not knowing when the iPhone 4 will arrive is seriously doing my head in atm

Whilst at blue gum I did a little more videoing. With family there as well as being tired from the race I really didn’t get that much footage so this is the edit.

This weekend WSMTB raced at Blue Gum Lodge. I remembered it being good, but not as good as it truly is. It is so unique this track. It almost never gets used but seems to hold up so well when the leaves are rolled of the top of it.
Its tight single track with a few grass/open sections that you can use to pass if necessary. The only issue with it is the fact it is a very short course so you need to have lower numbers on course.

I was feeling pretty good the morning of – after a 2 hour ride the day before hand where i didn’t really get my HR up very high at all. I lined up for B-Grade with pretty high expectations. I knew I hadn’t been that consistent with my training but still felt I would be carrying good form into the round.

Sadly that was about as good as it really got. I started really well, following Darren from WSMTB and I didn’t seem to be pushing to hard at all. I was in really close to him when we went over a left handed drop. Its a bit nasty the drop and I had forgotten about it. Basically being so close to Darren on such a winding single track meant I didn’t really see it coming up and sure enough I dropped the bike. I was supper pissed off with myself and at that point I dropped 2 spots. Without any real injury I got back up and continued on and felt i still had good pace.

By the third lap things weren’t as good as my start and I was starting to struggle a fair bit. I had taken back the two spots but I just didn’t have the legs and had to let them take me back, one of whom was Martin from Rockytrail. My target of a top 10 finish wasn’t going to happen today.

I was pretty devastated by then and felt shattered. I kept it upright till the finish and found I was still strong towards the end making it up all the technical sections reasonably easily.

Looking back at my times I am definitely in the right group. If I had been in C-Grade I would have come close to winning so I just need to put more time into my fitness [AGAIN! bahhhhh]. In the end I finished 14th which was 2nd last.
Insert blank silence here…

For Carbo the tubeless set up was bloody good and width stood all the battering Blue Gum dishes out. There was one incident where under power the chain jumped and I was so close to cracking my nuts on the top bar again [like the chain break last weekend].